1. SOWIT: Innovating for citizen deliberation in local government Dr. Clodagh Harris (UCC) Dr. Vanessa Liston (TCD) Mark O’Toole, Kilkenny County Council

2. Introduction Strengthening local democracy – key pillar of local government reform. Green paper (2008) refers to the need to ‘creatively and proactively seek new avenues’ of citizen participation and engagement. SOWIT: Social Web for Inclusive and Transparent democracy.

3. Citizen Deliberations Deliberative processes and institutions can lead to: 1. More informed decisions 2. Fairer and more publicly oriented outcomes 3. Improved civic skills 4. Promote legitimacy (Hendriks 2006, Held 2006)

4. Challenges Existing deliberative fora are: - Timebound - Limited to a representative sample of citizens - Potentially exclusive - Not integrated

6. Components 1. Public Sphere -Permanent and open on line forum for citizen, councillor and official communication and information exchange. - Citizens join to connect, exchange information and form discourse groups - Its output and sentiment can be generated into reports when requested for discussion in the Council 2. Deliberative Sphere - Activated during the policy development process - Involves randomly sampled ‘discourse speakers’ - Ensures inclusion through diversity of discourses 3. Local Council/policy development Sphere - Output of deliberative sphere is input to policy deliberations in Council - Final Council policy is scored for similarily/difference to deliberated citizen policy draft. - Provide direct feedback

7. Proposed SOWIT policy process Preliminary consultation Draft compiled Public Consultation Manager’s report Council SOWIT Public Sphere SOWIT Deliberation Sphere SOWIT Public Sphere Revised policy SOWIT Public Sphere Feedback

8. Conclusion SOWIT is being collaboratively developed Potential to - Empower citizens - Harness collective knowledge - Strengthen existing representative process - Increased transparency and legitimacy of policy making process.